David W. McCoyWhen we last left our superhero, he was faced with the difficult task of making A unequal to A, making Process A unequal to Process A. How challenging is this? You tell me.
Process A = Dealer X placing a price on Car Y
- Sammy has the dealer execute Process A while he worries about the undergrad English class he’s failing
- Julia has the dealer execute Process A while her new son squirms in her arms, and her other son tugs at her side
- Mr. J.C. Smiterton IV has the dealer execute Process A for his daughter while his assistant sits in the lobby reading the Financial Times
How much do you want to bet that you’ll get the same price each time? I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it.
So, Process A is poorly defined, you say. It’s an implicit, winner-take-all process just slightly north of roulette, and only a fool would expect the same output from that process. There are extraneous variables. The data isn’t the same. It all depends on the ecosystem and the position of the moon. And, then, isn’t it the exact same car?
Are we fools to expect the same output for the same process? Are we fools to think that a car on the car lot cannot be consistently priced? Saturn didn’t think so.
I’ll think about it over the weekend and see how I feel. See you next week.
Category: Business Process Management (BPM) Tags:
7 responses so far ↓
1 Pero Mojsov April 16, 2010 at 3:20 pm
I will have to argue that mathematically process A is equal to process A in any of these scenarios that you have listed. First the process is the same and then the car gets a price.
.. Not the same one but it gets a price indeed…
2 David McCoy April 16, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Pero:
I like your thinking: The process A executes and produces a result in all the cases. So, at a meta-level, each process is indeed the same, even if the results are different. But, is this an acceptable level of “sameness” beyond a meta-level analysis? Are we only looking for the completion of a series of steps, regardless of outcome? (I know some people who will say YES, that’s all we need!).
I don’t think we can argue this mathematically and at the meta level without considering the output. And to consider the output, we have to consider the input: the main variable I played with in the analogy (Input = Julia vs Sammy, etc). Let’s see what comes next…and “input” is a major focus of the answer of sameness, and whether the input is EXPLICIT or IMPLICIT is even more important to the final answer.
3 Ashish Bhagwat April 16, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Interesting interpretation of the postulate. Now, it works really well for a single value variable. Increase the variables, like in a matrix, and you need the Reflexive Operator A to depict Equality… (Oversimplified I know, but getting deeper would distract us all
So, in this case a Process model obviously is not an operator, it is just meta-data. Operator equivalent here would probably be the business rules and governance to drive consistency in “throughput” of the process, and not to mention the cycle time and other parameters of the process.
That is, if, in essence you’re asking as to what the Reflexive operator would be for all the process instances to show the reflexive property of equality!
First, minimize the variance in executed model – behavior of human operators (in this case the salesmen) has been the mainstay of all management theories starting from work study, Hawthorn experiments, motivation theories and so on – so don’t expect that to be simple. Workflow management tries, but we can only call it a serious attempt…
Then, the business rules need to be defined so that the decisions points really control, rather than just guide the process route…
Well, I think I need to put this on a blog post if I go further… and I don’t even know where I’m leading this… so, will wait for the next edition. Have a nice one!!!
4 Pero Mojsov April 19, 2010 at 5:20 pm
David:
The point of my comment is that we have to establish criteria to determine the sameness of the process. As you pointed out in the first instalment of this series 5=5, but let’s see this from a perspective of an artist with two posters in front of him. One has depicted black number 5 in bold times new roman and the other 5 in red italic sans serif, are they the same, as numbers they are but artistically I think they are not. Having that in mind and the fact that the processes involving humans can not be modeled with 100% accuracy (there will be always some an-accounted input) I am not sure that we can apply mathematical properties to the business processes.
5 David McCoy April 19, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Pero – We are heading to the same destination. I’m pointing out the sites along the route. We’ll get there.
6 Richard Welke April 20, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Irreflexive or invariant? I’d argue what’s discussed in the three client scenario here is a lack of invariance — the kind of stuff six-sigma types (God love them) worry about. But, invariance over which inputs? If it’s only the automobile sought (which is implied by your scenario but not explicit), then there’s “unexplained” variability. But as you note, there are other inputs into this process which cause different results. So, then the question is which process are we talking about — the one drawn on a cocktail napkin (or Varsity napkin) in BPMN, or the one that’s actually being executed by the dealer?
7 David McCoy April 20, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Richard – Indeed it’s all about variance, or the lack of invariance – so you are spot on. As for your other comment (which I did not post yet), let’s talk about that one at brunch on Saturday.
Leave a Comment